Cannes Palme D’or Winner Fjord To Open The 26th European Film Festival Malaysia
Kuala Lumpur, 12 November 2026 — The 26th European Film Festival Malaysia (EUFF) will open on 26 November 2026 at TGV Pavilion Kuala Lumpur with Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Across three weekends until 13 December, the festival will present 20 films from 20 countries, bringing together 17 European Union Member States with Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine. Tickets are priced at RM8.
Celebrating 26 years of European cinema in Malaysia, EUFF is arguably the longest-running film festival in the country. This edition is presented by the Delegation of the European Union to Malaysia and Blackflag, and marks the first year of a four-year collaboration that will carry the festival through to 2029. Under this year’s theme, ATLAS, the programme maps contemporary Europe through the films that defined the past year on the international circuit: eight premiered at Cannes and three competed for the Golden Lion in Venice.
Fjord by Cristian Mungiu, stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian family whose conservative faith and way of raising their children come under the scrutiny of the authorities after they settle in Norway. The film earned Mungiu his second Palme d’Or, 19 years after 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, placing him among the few filmmakers to win the award twice. The festival will close with Pierre Monnard’s Hello Betty from Switzerland, the story of Emmi Creola, the copywriter who in 1956 invented Betty Bossi, a fictional cook so convincing that much of the country believed she was real. Reinsve also leads Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2025 and six European Film Awards, including Best European Film, before becoming the first Norwegian film to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature in March.
From Venice came three films from last year’s main competition. Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, which opened the festival, won Toni Servillo the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his role as an Italian president weighing two final pardons. Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux, took the FIPRESCI Prize and the Marcello Mastroianni Award for Luna Wedler. Orphan is the new film by László Nemes, the Academy Award-winning director of Son of Saul.
Two titles arrive straight from this year’s Cannes competition: Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales, starring Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve, Virginie Efira and Vincent Cassel, and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beloved, with Javier Bardem as a celebrated director who casts his estranged daughter in his new film. They are joined by Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, winner of the Un Certain Regard Award, and Young Mothers by two-time Palme d’Or laureates Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, which won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2025.
The programme also makes room for discovery. Lauri-Matti Parppei’s debut A Light That Never Goes Out swept seven Jussi Awards in Finland, including Film of the Year. Sven Bresser’s first feature Reedland premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week. Jiří Mádl’s Waves, about the Czechoslovak Radio journalists of 1968, was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature, while Katarína Gramatová won Best Director at the Czech Lion Awards for Promise, I’ll Be Fine. Younger audiences can look forward to Croatia’s The Diary of Paulina P., adapted from a much loved children’s book.
This year, the festival will also travel beyond the cinema. Through EUFF x Astro First, a special initiative with Official Partner Astro, selected films from the 26th EUFF programme will be available on Astro First, Astro’s home cinema service, from January 2027. The initiative is part of Astro’s new efforts to support film festivals in Malaysia, bringing award-winning European cinema into homes across the country, and to audiences who may not be able to attend the festival in Kuala Lumpur. The selected titles will be announced later this year.
“20 films from 20 European countries – thrilled the European Film Festival is back in KL! I am delighted that we – the European Union Delegation together with the Embassies of EU Member States and our partners from Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine – joined forces again in organising the 26th edition of the European Film Festival in Malaysia. Our collaboration embodies the European Union’s motto, ‘United in diversity’, celebrating the richness of Europe’s different cultures and creative voices, while bringing them together through the universal language of cinema. We look forward to sharing these stories with Malaysian audiences and further strengthening the cultural ties and mutual understanding between Europe and Malaysia,” said H.E. Rafael Daerr, Ambassador of the European Union to Malaysia.
“Our first thanks go to the filmmakers, and to everyone who brought their work to Malaysia. Many of these films arrive with cinema’s highest honours, but what moved us most was how, placed side by side, they began to speak to one another. Almost without planning it, this year’s selection returned again and again to family: a household under the gaze of the state in Fjord, fathers and daughters who can only meet through their art in Sentimental Value and The Beloved, young women choosing what kind of mothers to become in Young Mothers. Beside them stand those who refuse silence, from the radio journalists of Waves to the last man alive in U Are the Universe, still searching for one other voice. These are European stories, but Malaysian audiences will find their own questions in them. Come for the names you know, but keep an open mind for the ones you do not. The film you never expected to love may be the one that stays with you,” said Yu Ern Chia, Festival Director of EUFF.
The 26th European Film Festival Malaysia is presented by the Delegation of the European Union to Malaysia and Blackflag, with the support of its Official Partners, the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS), TGV Cinemas and Astro, and its Official Sponsors, Sotong Potong Studio, Goggler, Yusari Studios, Deoworkz, Absolute Apparel and Gravity S Nine Resources, whose support brings this year’s programme to audiences in Malaysia.
The 26th European Film Festival Malaysia runs from 26 November to 13 December 2026 at TGV Pavilion Kuala Lumpur. Tickets are priced at RM8 and are available at TGV ticketing kiosks, on tgv.com.my and through the TGV mobile app. The full line-up is listed in the appendix.
For more information, please visit Instagram (@euinmalaysia) or Facebook (European Film Festival in Malaysia).
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